Mystery is truth's dancing partner.

If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.

Look at a man the way he is and he only becomes worse, but look at him as if he were what he could be, then he becomes what he should be.

A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.

It is always a sign of an unproductive time when it concerns itself with petty and technical aspects [in philology], and likewiseit is a sign of an unproductive person to pursue such trifles.

To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.

How many years must a man do nothing, before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!